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Gulliver’s Travels in Washington, D.C.

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By Caroline Breashears

Someone should tell Washington’s elite that Gulliver’s Travels is a satire, not a handbook.

Yes, in Part III of Jonathan Swift’s tale, Laputa sounds a lot like Washington, D.C. It also sounds a lot like the Spanish word for “whore,” about which the late P. J. O’Rourke is surely laughing from Heaven.

The island of Laputa floats miles above Balnibarbi, allowing the King and his court to focus on their interests without seeing, much less hearing, the ordinary citizens beneath them. The latter is, in current parlance, the Deplorables.

For Laputa’s denizens, the people fall as far below them in intelligence as in altitude, particularly in understanding higher math. The court Ministers consider taking measurements or adding numbers beneath them. As a result, on Laputa “their Houses are ill built, the Walls bevil, without one right Angle in any Apartment; and this Defect ariseth from the Contempt they bear for practical Geometry.” The elite explanation, of course, is that their “Instructions” are “too refined for the Intellectuals of their Workmen.”

Likewise, the Biden Administration denied the reality of inflation for months, because they understood economics better than the rest of us. Their about-face, evident in the name of the Inflation Reduction Act, offers little comfort to those of us unable to bring home the bacon (now 18 percent more expensive than last year). The White House might be structurally sound, but its resident’s economic policies are as askew as any building on Laputa.

But in Swift’s satire, such practical matters are less alarming than astronomical concerns. Laputa’s elite are so worried about the demise of the planet that they hardly sleep: “When they meet an Acquaintance in the Morning, the first Question is about the Sun’s Health.” They even conduct conversations “with the same Temper that Boys discover, in delighting to hear terrible Stories of Sprites and Hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to Bed for fear.”

One senses similar delicious anxiety in D.C., where the elite have devised an Inflation Reduction Act with $369 billion to combat climate change. Only those with their heads in the clouds could understand the relationship between those issues.

Meanwhile, citizens cope with the threats and destruction wrought by the elite. On Balnibarbi, citizens watch the movements of Laputa warily. If they “refuse to pay the usual tribute,” the King has “two Methods of reducing them to Obedience.” One is to position his island over their land in such a way as to deprive them of sun and rain. In some cases, they are even “pelted from above with great Stones, against which they have no Defence.”

Unfortunately, in the absence of great stones to throw at citizens, the IRS has for years been stockpiling guns and ammunition, and they seek to hire more IRS agents to improve their rate of collection (or assault).

The more drastic alternative for the King of Laputa is to drop the island on citizens’ heads, a solution avoided due to the risk of damaging the island itself. Fortunately, our leaders cannot crush citizens with a floating island, though their politicized approach to laws unravels the fabric of our country. Just ask the parents targeted by the FBI or the Supreme Court Justices threatened not simply by citizens but a leader of the United States Senate.

Even Swift’s gullible protagonist senses something is wrong. On Laputa, the courtiers neglect Gulliver because he is their inferior in math and music, so he descends to the land of Balnibarbi. What he finds is a land in disorder: people with wild eyes, fields badly cultivated, houses collapsing. What, he asks his host, has happened?

It is not only his question about ours. Why has the rate of homicides spiked, particularly in large cities? Why is there a literacy crisis? Why are we paying so much for basics like eggs and oranges?

Swift’s wise Lord Munodi explains that decades earlier: Some individuals visited Laputa and returned to Balnibarbi with “schemes for putting all Arts, Sciences, Languages, and Mechanicks upon a new Foot.” They erected an Academy of Projectors, who had been projecting away for decades. The result was “Houses in Ruins, and the People without Food or Cloaths.”

Rather than admit error, however, the Projectors doubled down on their schemes and shamed those who followed established systems. Such rational people were “Enemies to Art, ignorant, and ill Commonwealth-men, preferring their own Ease and Sloth before the general Improvement of their Country.”

Those who resisted faced Cancellation. Even Lord Munodi, “being then not very well at Court,” was pressured to agree to one scheme, which wrecked his mill.

Despite such failures, however, all cities in Balnibarbi have Academies of Projectors. Gulliver visits one, where he sees such useful experiments as a man trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, and another trying to reduce excrement to its original food. Such projectors are constantly in need of funding, just like many of our current scientists. It is why NASA awarded Princeton a grant to study how humans would react to aliens.

Likewise, the ill success of Balnibarbi warns us of the failure of many new schemes for teaching, among other things, math. Reducing standards or calling math “racist” will not help students or build a better society.

Nor will it work to force a new language on people. At the Academy of Lagado, one failed scheme was to replace words with things: One would simply cart around everything necessary for a conversation. Fortunately, women along with “the Vulgar and Illiterate” threatened to rebel “unless they might be allowed the Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the Manner of their Forefathers: Such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the common People.”

And such were the “common People” who rebelled this year against the threat to free speech presented by Biden’s Disinformation Board.

Perhaps, like the professors at the school of political projectors, we are also “out of [our] Senses” in suggesting that our leaders reward merit and work with the wise. Perhaps we are doomed to live under the shadow of a government that, like Laputa, hovers over us with extraordinary power.

Or perhaps, like the King on the Island of Laputa, our elite need a reminder of the danger of wielding such power. Unlike Swift’s protagonist, we are not gullible.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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Croatians Excluded from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

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By Craig J. Cantoni

Their exclusion reveals DEI’s double standards, stereotypes, discrimination, and sophistry.

Hamza Kopanja, a 32-year-old Croatian-American, is excluded from diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, although by any definition of “minority” and “disadvantaged,” he fits the bill.*

He can’t complain about the exclusion, however, because it would be seen in some quarters as proof that he is insensitive to the plight of people of color and maybe even racist.

Meanwhile, the same quarters see the plight of his people as irrelevant and unimportant, because they are deemed to have the wrong epidermis.  Those who make such prejudicial judgments see themselves as deep thinkers but are about as superficial as they come.

Who are Hamza’s people?  They’re victims of the Bosnian War.

Hamza’s father was killed in 1994 in the war, and his mother was brutally raped, one of an estimated 30,000 women who had been raped in the war.  After the war, she took Hamza and his sister Aleza to the United States as refugees and moved to St. Louis, which has the largest concentration of Bosnian refugees in the US and possibly the world.

Hamza and his mother and sister are three of the estimated 70,000 Bosnian refugees who settled in St. Louis.  Most of them made their home in the former German section of the city, on the south side, not far from my boyhood home.

Many of the Bosnians have since moved to the suburbs or other cities, due to criminals from nearby high-crime areas who prey on the community.  (The City of St. Louis comprises only 10 percent of the population of metro St. Louis, because so many people, including many African Americans, have fled the city for the suburbs over the decades.)

The fear of crime intensified in 2014, when a Bosnian American named Zamir Begic was beaten to death with hammers by a gang of African Americans and Latinos on a major thoroughfare in the Bosnian community as he tried to protect his fiancé. Many Bosnians saw it as a hate crime, believing that the two were targeted because of their race.

Hamza’s mother works as a maid, and he works as a night manager in a convenience store, where his life is literally at risk.  He had good grades in high school and earned an associate’s degree at a nearby community college.  He had applied to St. Louis-based Washington University and St. Louis University, hoping to be accepted under their set-aside programs, but was rejected.

He tried but failed to land a management trainee position with one of the many large employers in metro St. Louis that tout their diversity bona fides, such as Emerson Electric, Monsanto, Wells Fargo Advisors, Anheuser-Busch, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.  He suspected that he was of the wrong race and not seen as a disadvantaged minority, although his family is poor, and Croatians are one of the smallest minority groups in America.

No doubt, these big companies have departments of diversity and inclusion.  They should be called departments of epidermis.  It’s a safe bet that they had put Hamza into the category of White, not only because of his skin color but also because he doesn’t fit the other official racial/ethnic categories of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American.

These six contrived categories hide the fact that there are hundreds of unique ethnocultural groups in America and the world, each with a unique blend of physical characteristics, culture, religious beliefs, nationality, socioeconomic class, and histories of being oppressors and the oppressed.  The categories erase this heritage and reflect a profound ignorance of anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and history.

The White category encompasses a large share of the hundreds of ethnocultural groups, including Croatians.  It also includes 40 million Americans who live in poverty, some of whom are descendants of dirt-poor sharecroppers, and others of whom live in de-industrialized towns suffering from broken families, drug addiction, blight, and a dearth of economic opportunities.

Hamza knows that the game of diversity roulette is rigged against him.   He also knows that when employers and colleges say that diversity is a strength, they aren’t referring to him.  And when they say that professional jobs, management jobs, and boards of directors should reflect the diversity of the nation, they aren’t referring to Croatians, or to the scores of other minority groups of limited political and economic power who are categorized as White.

He knows this because of the mandatory racial-sensitivity class he took in community college.  The themes of the class were that whites are privileged, that they attained their privilege from oppressing non-whites, that they all have identical values and beliefs, that they are consciously or unconsciously racist, and that they stay in power and keep non-whites down by adhering to white norms and beliefs, such as marriage and capitalism.  As such, they have nothing new to add in the classroom or workplace and should defer to the opinions of non-whites.

Actually, Hamza would have a lot to add.  He knows the history, geography, and ethnic makeup of the former Yugoslavia (a k a Land of Slavs).  He knows the failures of communism, socialism, and one-party rule.   He can look at a map and point out the location of Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Vojvodina.  He can list the main ethnic groups that reside in what is the former Yugoslavia, including Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Slovenes, Albanians, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Turks. And he knows that the dominant religions are Catholic, Orthodox Christian, and Muslim (Sunni Muslim, to be exact).

Most important, he knows what can happen in a multiethnic society when racial and ethnic resentments, recriminations, and revenge are encouraged by the state and/or powerful agitators.  This is what led to the Bosnian War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a war in which 100,000 people died and 2.2 million were displaced.

No wonder Hamza is excluded from diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and his views aren’t solicited.  If Croatians and the hundreds of other unique ethnocultural groups were recognized and listened to, the entire edifice of DEI would collapse, because it would become obvious that the edifice is built on double standards, stereotypes, discrimination, and sophistry.

* Hamza Kopanja and family are fictional characters but true to life.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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Democrats’ Green Energy ‘Transition’ Costs You Way More And Gives You Way Less

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By Chuck Devore

The Inflation Reduction Act raises taxes on the middle class and will sabotage the country’s power grid by making green energy unavoidable.

Democrats and their leftist allies are celebrating the U.S. Senate’s passage of the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act.” Subject to a vote out of the Rules Committee mid-week, it’s expected that H.R. 5376 will be voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday or over the weekend at the latest. 

The Democrats’ tax and spending bill weighs in at more than 750 pages and covers a wide range of issues from health care to energy. What it doesn’t do is reduce inflation. What it does do is raise taxes in a recession. Violating a key campaign promise of Joe Biden, the bill raises taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.

When natural gas prices are approaching historical highs, the bill also raises taxes on natural gas, including for household use, by $6.5 billion. This amounts to an average family shelling out 17 percent more for natural gas. With $12 billion in additional taxes on oil and $1.2 billion on coal, Democrats are aggressively pursuing a large-scale “transition” to green energy.

Perhaps Congress should have first asked the Germans how their transition — known there as “Energiewende” — is working out. With German power prices soaring even before Russia invaded Ukraine, Germans are increasingly turning back the clock to coal and, in some cases, even further back to wood. 

Ironically, the Inflation Reduction Act has a provision that provides $2,000 for the installation of “A biomass stove or boiler which (has) a thermal efficiency rating of at least 75 percent.” A “biomass stove” is a fancy term for a wood-burning stove.

Burning wood is terrible for air quality. California’s chief air quality regulator warns that burning wood generates carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen (volatile organic compounds that make photochemical smog), ozone, particulates, sulfur dioxide, lead, and mercury. In parts of California, wood burning is banned during air quality alerts. So that fancy $3,000 high-efficiency biomass stove that the federal government underwrote for $2,000 may sit idle on those cold winter days.

The bill also has provisions aimed at preventing tax credits from subsidizing wind, solar, electric vehicles, and batteries that use material from China. But these measures will simply result in substitution: Chinese steel not used in a federally subsidized wind turbine will instead be used in a commercially built high rise.

In 2020, America imported more than $4.6 billion in wind turbines and parts. It’s unclear how rapidly American manufacturing can fill the gap to meet the federally spurred demand. Just in case, the bill has a provision that allows the secretary of energy to waive American provisions if the costs of domestic materials are 25 percent higher than imports from China.

However, an even larger problem hides in plain sight regarding our electric grid. The Inflation Reduction Act doubles down on federal support for wind and solar installations and the costly transmission lines to connect these typically rural facilities with the urban areas that use their power. This problem can be seen in two states that have, for differing reasons, embraced renewable energy: California (mostly solar) and Texas (mostly wind). 

In 2020, the wind power industry installed hardware capable of generating 16.9 gigawatts of wind capacity, almost double the prior year. For perspective, on hot summer days, Texas consumes about 80 gigawatts of power.

But wind power is highly variable. Depending on the location and season, wind turbines produce about 40 percent of their installed capacity.

In Texas, on Aug. 9, the state’s more than 15,000 wind turbines had an installed capacity of about 38 gigawatts — some 29 percent of America’s total wind power — but only generated a peak of 10.4 gigawatts at 2 a.m., falling to 1.4 gigawatts at noon when the power demands were far higher. Thus, Texas’s vast wind farms generated 27 percent of their theoretical capacity at night and less than 4 percent during the day. This is pretty common.

To be useful in a modern nation, an electric grid must reliably generate energy every single hour of every day. As the output from wind power jumps around, it tends to displace reliable hydrocarbon-based power at night, forcing those facilities to curtail their output. Armed with the federal Production Tax Credit, wind producers often pay the grid to take their power — the federal government more than making up for the loss. 

The government constantly reimbursing wind production facilities distorts the marketplace, discouraging investment in power plants that generate dispatchable power. Power plants are able to produce power on demand, unlike wind or solar installations, and the government chooses to subsidize the less effective means of energy production.

H.R. 5376 continues this power grid investment distortion. As a result, every year that sees more wind and solar added to the grid will mean greater pressure on natural gas and coal-fired power plants to close. Without adequate dispatchable power on hand, the grid will become more prone to blackouts or “demand reduction” measures where the “smart grid” will tell your air conditioner to turn off on a hot day.

Further, the cost of electricity will necessarily skyrocket. While federally subsidized wind and solar are “cheap” — if we ignore the billions in needed new transmission lines and the lack of reliability — dependable energy becomes increasingly more expensive as the requirement for standby power and massive battery farms grow.

Thus, H.R. 5376 dumps federal funds on wind and solar while making the grid more unstable and electricity more expensive.

Not to fear, though, the bill appropriates $100 million for studies and modeling to look at the effect of climate change on the grid, batteries, “demand-side management” (which is little more than the remote turning up of your thermostat), and nationalizing the electric grid. So once federal policy makes the grid unstable, the feds will have a plan to take over the mess they created.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

“Inflation Reduction Act” Is “Economic Malpractice” thumbnail

“Inflation Reduction Act” Is “Economic Malpractice”

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By David Kelly

On Sunday afternoon, it took all 50 Democratic senators, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, to pass their deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act (H.R. 5376) by a 51–50 vote, sending it to the House. The bill at one time was thought to have been “dead in the water,” but gained life with the support of Senators Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.).

Today’s sky-high inflation is largely caused by last year’s Democratic spending of $1.9 trillion in the taxpayer-funded American Rescue Plan. Spending another $740 billion on climate and healthcare boondoggles with this bill will only accelerate inflation.  

Political analyst David Harsanyi notes, “The Inflation Reduction Act is to inflation what the Affordable Care Act — which doubled premium costs — was to health care insurance.”

Even Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who voted for the new bill, complained that it doesn’t do what its title claims — namely, reduce inflation — referring to it as the  “so-called” Inflation Reduction Act. “I say so-called by the way, because according to the CBO and other economic organizations that have studied this bill, it will, in fact, have a minimal impact on inflation,” Sanders said on Saturday.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes hundreds of billions for boondoggle “green energy” projects, and hundreds of billions in tax increases — all of which will fuel inflation, not reduce it. Democrats have claimed this bill as a big win, especially for their leftist constituents, but it’s a big loser for American consumers and taxpayers, who will actually be paying for corporate tax increases and government redistribution of tax benefits for this bill’s pet projects.

Here are key points from the Democrats’ own summary of the Inflation Reduction Act:

• Enacts historic deficit reduction to fight inflation

• Lowers energy costs, increases cleaner production, and reduces carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030

• Allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices and caps out-of-pocket costs to $2,000

• Lowers ACA health care premiums for millions of Americans

• Make biggest corporations and ultra-wealthy pay their fair share

• There are no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses — we are closing tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code.

In a recent interview on Fox & Friends Weekend, American Legislative Exchange Council economist Jonathan Williams hammered Democrats’ latest effort to combat inflation with the Inflation Reduction Act, arguing that raising taxes and increasing spending is “economic malpractice.”

Williams shared, “What we need is [to go] in the opposite direction and actually cut spending in Washington. It’s clear we don’t have a problem with the lack of tax revenue here. We’ve hit record tax revenue numbers time and time again in recent years, but we just spend faster than the taxes are coming in. And this is a huge problem here.”

All the Republican senators pushed hard against the bill, including Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) who blasted Biden’s $369 billion on “climate” and $433 billion in new spending: “This bill is going to fuel even more inflation. It’s not going to fight inflation, no matter what Joe Manchin says. And it is going to kill jobs by raising taxes on businesses. And by the way, those taxes will also fuel more inflation because businesses will pass tax hikes along to consumers. The last thing we should be doing is putting another trillion-dollar tax and spending bill into an economy that has both record-high inflation and a recession. That is something that only Joe Biden could have accomplished.”

If this bill becomes law, The Heritage Foundation estimates: “Taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes below $75,000 would ultimately shoulder an estimated $136 billion of new revenues from the corporate minimum tax and the IRS enforcement provisions, or about 26% of the total. Indeed, the revenues would fall disproportionately hard on taxpayers making less than $25,000 per year.”

What will the House of Representatives do with the Senate’s Inflation Reduction Act? If they pass it as it stands now, Americans will continue to suffer under Biden’s leftist regime. And with November elections nearing, Democrats in the House will need to consider their electability as their constituents decide if they deserve to remain in office. We can only hope this bill is too much for House Democrats to pass.

*****

This article was published by The New American and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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The Next Populist Moment

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By Declan Leary

After Tuesday’s primaries, the New Right has officially arrived. Next to win, and then to govern.

On Tuesday [August 2], New Right rising star Blake Masters won Arizona’s Republican Senate primary by more than a ten-point margin. Kari Lake defeated establishment candidate Karrin Taylor Robson in the state’s gubernatorial primary. Up in Michigan, MAGA challenger John Gibbs—a Stanford and Harvard grad and faithful Catholic convert who served as assistant secretary of HUD—bested anti-Trump incumbent Peter Meijer by a slim but safe 3.6-point margin.

The only real question mark left on the field is Joe Kent, a decorated retired Green Beret and Gold Star husband running for Washington State’s 3rd district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kent is hoping to unseat Jaime Herrera Beutler, a five-term incumbent liberal Republican who (like Meijer) voted to impeach President Trump.

On Wednesday morning, with 57 percent reporting and Kent trailing Beutler by a good distance, many were ready to call the race against the America First challenger. As numbers slowly trickle in, though, it seems their judgment was premature. While counting is still inexplicably unfinished, at the time of writing Kent has closed the gap to just 1.3 points, with only 83 percent of all votes reported. A path to victory remains open for Kent, and seems clearer with every batch of counted votes.

If he does lose, it will be no mystery why: Heidi St. John. The Christian mommy-blogger-cum-entrepreneur was meant to bow out if she did not receive the 45th president’s endorsement. When the nod went to Kent, St. John stayed in. At present, she is trailing at 15.7 percent to Kent’s 22. If the America First vote had not been split, it would be clear ahead of Beutler’s 23.3 percent.

Halfway across the country in Kansas, a referendum on abortion was shot down to much fanfare. Pro-abortion Democrats and accommodationist Republicans have taken the result as evidence that pro-life policy will not actually be viable at the state level after Roe. Rachel Sweet, campaign manager of the pro-abortion group Kansas for Constitutional Freedom, claimed that “the people of Kansas have spoken. They think that abortion should be safe, legal and accessible in the state of Kansas.” President Joe Biden likewise asserted that “this vote makes clear” that “the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions.”

Of course, the vote does nothing of the sort. The text of the amendment on the ballot read as follows:

Because Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion. To the extent permitted by the constitution of the United States, the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may pass laws regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, laws that account for circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or circumstnces [sic] of necessity to save the life of the mother.

Maybe the average voter is a lot smarter than I am; I certainly hope he is. But if I got away from work for a few minutes on a Tuesday to cast my vote quickly in a primary election, I wouldn’t have the bandwidth to make sense of that word salad. At a glance (which is all most people give), a reasonable person could easily take a “No” vote to mean not empowering legislators to enshrine a fictional right to abortion at the state level. Pair this fact—that most people likely had no idea what they were voting for—with the state’s infamous libertarian streak, and it is hardly a surprise that the Kansas measure failed. It is certainly not an indictment of the prospects for outlawing abortion in America writ large.

So, with two easily explicable exceptions, Tuesday was a banner night for the GOP’s ascendant wing—call it pro-Trump, MAGA, America First, New Right, or populist. Ben Domenech, a prominent D.C. libertarian, strangely and preemptively cast the night as “not a particularly good showing for populists.” But it was, on almost any measure, an absolutely stellar showing.

Masters in particular should inspire hope among the upstart faction. He opposes abortion wholesale, and thinks Griswold and Obergefell should go the way of Roe. He reads Curtis Yarvin and Ted Kaczynski. He wants to scale back immigration and get a handle on Big Tech. He has thoughts on the last election and the riot at the Capitol. The father of three young children, he ran not just on an America First but a pro-family platform.

Conventional wisdom said he was unelectable as late as Tuesday afternoon. Yet he outpaced even J.D. Vance’s 8.3-point win in Ohio. This cycle has shown beyond any doubt that the possible in politics is lightyears beyond the establishment’s measure of it.

No surprise, then, that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is bothered by this latest round of victors. Once bullish on the party’s midterm prospects, by Wednesday McConnell was fretting on Fox News that this election would be a nail-biter. Unable to learn a lesson from the primaries, he seems to think a Republican Party with any higher message than complaining about Joe Biden will have no prospect of securing a majority. And if they did, he would surely have no interest in allowing them to govern.

McConnell is right to be worried, in that case: not that this new crop of Republicans will lose, but that they—we—are going to win.

Postscript: the latest we have is Kent is behind by just 257 votes.

*****

This article was published by The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

Japan’s Government Looted the Future—and Its Children Are Paying the Price thumbnail

Japan’s Government Looted the Future—and Its Children Are Paying the Price

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By Hiroshi Yoshida

Japan’s fiscal mismanagement and massive national debt violate the principles of democratic fiscal responsibility.

Editor’s Note: The years from 1991 to 2001 are known as “The Lost Decade” in Japan. After years of rapid growth in the 1980s, the Japanese economy fell into a prolonged slump marked by persistent, high unemployment, low growth rates, and erratic monetary policy. (See “The Lost Decade” for additional information on this.)

In recent years, Japan’s economy has somewhat rebounded but as economist Hiroshi Yoshida explains below, new issues are now arising that call into question Tokyo’s increasing debt. One of the problems he identifies is present here in the US as well, namely, “Not enough people stand up for future generations when it comes to fiscal policy.”)

The only transactions that can happen in a market are ones where both parties mutually benefit and can say arigatо̄ (thank you, in Japanese) as a result. By using accounting to examine such transactions we know that both parties’ utility increases; both are better off as a result of completing the transaction. On top of that, people are not worse off than they were before should they decline to engage in a given transaction.

Governments are run by taxes. The main concern of public finance, however, has from the beginning been to raise the largest sums with the least resistance. In a nation that advocates democracy, the people also called the citizens or the taxpayers, are sovereign. Taxes can only be levied with the consent of the governed. Running a deficit and burdening children and the unborn is in direct conflict with the principles underlying democratic fiscal policy. Never shift your deficit onto your children; that is a cornerstone to democratic governance.

Here in Japan, we must also reject the notion that we can rack up the national debt and use it as a source of financing. Yet future generations don’t have a say in what the government does here and now. Not enough people stand up for future generations when it comes to fiscal policy. In 1965, Japanese government bonds (JGBs) were issued to cover a revenue shortfall of 5.3% of government spending. Last year in 2021, that increased to cover 40 percent of government spending. The outstanding balance of government bonds issued on an ongoing basis is now twice Japan’s GDP.

When the market is allowed to function it determines interest rates, the rate at which people can borrow capital. If the economy does not grow, it is not possible for a borrower such as the Japanese government to pay back a loan with interest.

The 1492 Summa de arithmetica, written by Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445-1517), contains a mathematical law known as the Rule of 72. This rule states that if you divide a given interest rate by 72, you can find the number of years needed for the principal investment to double. That would mean it takes 10 years for an investment to double at a 7.2 % interest rate. Let’s try this with an electronic calculator to see if it really works. Enter the number “1” and hit “x” button twice, and input 1.072 (a 7.2% interest rate). Hit the “=” button 10 times. The initial value ends up doubling, doesn’t it? When Japan started to stray from a balanced budget (1972-1987) the interest rate on JGBs was around 8%.

The interest rate on government bonds has since been lowered to reduce the rapidly growing outstanding debt and the cost of government bonds. It will take 14,400 years to double the principal at the current interest rate of 0.005 percent. To give you an idea of how long 14,400 years is, 14,400 years ago is when mankind finally began rice cultivation in the Yangtze River basin in China. That is prehistory; a time before mankind started keeping written records. It is impossible to double the principal of a sum of money without taking a long time at such an interest rate. Not only has issuing government debt left future generations to foot the bill, but the interest rate of only 0.005 percent on JGBs is a statement of the nation’s inability to grow the economy. Hopefully, Japanese taxpayers will take notice of this.

By lowering interest rates, the government’s interest payments have become smaller and the future value of money has decreased. The Bank of Japan holds more than half of the JGBs issued by the Japanese government. And now, as both the rate and value of the yen against the US dollar begin to fall, prices have started to rise. The price of iPhones in Japan is going up 20 percent this month.

Where there is good politics, people gather. That is to say, people vote with their feet, as my friends in America know from inter-state migration. Japan’s fiscal mismanagement and massive national debt violate the principles of democratic fiscal responsibility. As a result, Japan is losing its lure and appeal to future generations and the birth rate continues to plummet.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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We Have No Reason To Trust The FBI

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By David Harsanyi

If Republicans were doing any of this, Democrats would be calling it authoritarian. And they’d be right.

The day before Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016, The New York Times’s Paul Krugman claimed that the FBI—along with “Russian intelligence”—had “rigged the election.” Election denialism is perfectly acceptable behavior on the left. Krugman blamed the “rigged election” on “people within the F.B.I.” who, he asserted, “clearly felt that under Mr. Comey they had a free hand to indulge their political preferences,” by which he meant the investigation into Clinton’s email server. One can imagine the tenor of Krugman’s rhetoric if the investigation had been launched by the administration of Mitt Romney or George W. Bush or signed off on by AG Robert Bork.

Is it still the case that investigating a candidate for wrongdoing is “rigging” an election? Yesterday, Merrick Garland’s DOJ raided the home of a former president, and likely future presidential candidate, in a case regarding “potential mishandling of classified documents,” according to The Washington Post. Is that really it? We have long been told that “mishandling of classified documents” isn’t a serious crime.

When Clinton set up a secret private server to circumvent transparency, likely to hide favor-trading related to her now-obsolete corrupt foundation, it was a potential felony. In that illegal server, the FBI would find 100 emails containing classified information, 65 marked “Secret,” 22 marked “Top Secret,” and over 2,000 emails that would be retroactively marked classified. Many felonies. Unlike Trump, who had the power to declassify any document he wished, Hillary could not. And as numerous experts pointed out, the chances that those documents were intercepted by foreign powers were quite high. No one’s home was raided by the FBI.

Indeed, Hillary’s staff then attempted to destroy all evidence related to that secret illegal server, wiping it and literally using hammers to break phones and laptops—as Comey noted at the time, they “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” Another bunch of potential felonies. Not only were there no FBI raids, but Comey showered Clinton’s staff with immunity.

Comey would make the exceptionally unconvincing case that though everything that Hillary had done was illegal, the most qualified person to ever run for the presidency had merely acted “extremely careless.” More likely, Comey didn’t want to charge a presidential candidate with a bunch of felonies in the run-up to an election. It’s also true that the mishandling of documents had not been treated seriously in past examples. When former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger stole highly classified documents from the National Archives—memos regarding the Clinton administration’s failed anti-terrorism efforts—he was given community service. No one raided his home to look for more documents.

While these double standards may not induce you to distrust the FBI, what happened next should. Hillary would kick off the entire bogus Trump-Russia investigation, signing off on the leak of a fictitious oppo-research document, which was bolstered, most likely, by Russian disinformation. Yet, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, initial FISA applications used by the FBI to spy on Trump’s orbit “relied entirely” on information from the dossier author Christopher Steele. Not only were the applications riddled with 17 “significant errors,” and not only would the FBI withhold contradictory evidence in the case, but a lawyer for the agency doctored an email and used it as the basis for a sworn statement to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Then again, why wouldn’t an Obama administration that spied on journalists, millions of Americans, and even senators—and then lied about it–also spy on the political opposition? Those same people, some ensconced in the agency, behind this abuse were feeding the media one half-baked Trump conspiracy theory after the next. Investigation after investigation would be launched on that information, and despite lofty promises of Democrats, not a single person in Trump’s orbit would be indicted of anything having to do with colluding with Putin to undermine the election of 2016. It was all a partisan attempt to criminalize policy positions they dislike.

Now we’ve moved on to Jan. 6 committee hearings. The same double standards, of course, are again in play. When Republicans hold committee hearings, Democrats get to name their members. When Democrats hold committee hearings, they get to name all the members. When Obama Attorney General Eric Holder is held in contempt of Congress over his role in sending guns to drug lords, he can laugh it off. When former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro is held in contempt, he is shackled by the FBI. When Democrats support underlying causes that end in riots, they are absolved of responsibility. When Republicans do, they are insurrectionists.

All of this is an effort to cobble together disparate events and statements to create the perception that Republicans led a concerted “coup” against the government. It seems to me, and perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, that this raid is part of that partisan effort. We’ll soon find out. But you don’t have to be a fan of Trump — and I’m not; he acted recklessly and unpresidential on Jan. 6, to say the least — to see how these precedents are dangerous or how they corrode trust in institutions.

Of course, if Republicans were doing any of this, Democrats would be calling it authoritarian. And they’d be right.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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A Little Reality About the New Spending Bill

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By Bruce Bialosky

The Democrats are masters of misnaming the intended purpose of bills they offer up to disguise what is really happening. It is indicative of how gullible they believe we are. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will do nothing to reduce inflation. The main reason is that revenues will not be achieved to offset the expenditures.

This column has a ban on using definitive terminology. I do not use words like Never, Always, or Every. That is because those terms are rarely applicable. However, here is a truism. Whenever there is a projection of revenues that will be produced from a new tax increase, they never come to fruition. Here is another truism. Whenever there is a reduction in tax rates, they always produce increased governmental revenues. I know this because I have both studied and written about it for over 40 years.

This ridiculously named bill has a few major elements of the supposed increase in revenue. Please do not believe the eventual scoring by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO is rarely correct because they do their scoring based on whatever Congress tells them to do. Just think about this: if Schumer named this bill which he did, do you think he gave the CBO realistic numbers on which to do a projection?

The first element of this bill’s increased revenues has to do with money flowing in from audits because of new hires at the IRS. This is an agency that cannot even answer their phones. This is an agency that cannot even process their tax returns – the current estimate is they are twenty million behind, but who really knows? I believe they have finally processed all the 2020 tax returns. They are now digging into the unprocessed 2021 returns. This is an agency that is currently auditing a client of mine and they are having a problem because neither the computer of the auditor nor his supervisor can read a thumb drive I sent them. They cannot read any thumb drives.

Yes, the IRS needs an increased budget to tackle its basic problems which include a wholly inadequate computer system. Agents communicate this regularly. It is compounded by allowing agents to work from home which has significantly impacted IRS production because of these inadequate systems. If the system does not work well when they are sitting in front of their office screens, how well do you think they operate remotely?

Until they fix these problems, how are they going to hire a slew of new people to perform audits? And where are they getting all these new personnel to work at the most reviled agency in the country? We cannot get people to work at our restaurants, car repair shops, or appliance stores. So how is the IRS going to get qualified personnel to work their audits? How many people graduating college with an accounting degree are going to work for the IRS when there is a shortage of personnel at accounting firms with a much more attractive environment and future? They may be able to hire people with sociology or geography degrees who can only get jobs as bartenders. How long do you think it will take them to get prepared to audit your tax return? How long to audit Amazon?

I can say if you should get audited by these people, the process will take at least twice as long as it should because they will be inexperienced. A professional CPA will need to walk them through everything about which they have no clue. So, you tell me, is this $80 billion spent over the next ten years going to bring in an additional $204 billion from all those supposed tax cheats out there? And will spending an additional $8 billion a year on the IRS for the next ten years do anything to reduce inflation in 2022, 2023, or 2024? I think you know that answer.

Then there is the big lie of this bill. It repeals the Trump “rebate rule.” This was a vague rule that has to do with Medicare Part D that was never implemented by Trump, has not been implemented by Biden, and the regulation never going into effect. This is a magical savings of $120 billion that was never implemented and thus becomes “mystery savings.”

Last, we must confront the corporate minimum tax of 15%. Sounds nice. I have read a substantial number of analyses of these corporations that supposedly pay no taxes. We hear this kind of malarkey all the time. I will get a call from a client. They will tell me they spoke to someone, and they were paying no taxes. “Why am I paying so much?” My answer is always they are full of ———. You fill in the blank. Then I tell them to get a copy of the tax return for analysis. And that is the problem, the Left-wing analyses of these “non-paying entities” never include a full analysis of the reasons why these entities are not paying taxes.

They may be getting research credits which Congress created to encourage companies to spend money on research and development with the idea that these companies will maintain or increase their position to be competitive in the world economy. They may be buying Low Income Housing Tax Credits which encourages the development of affordable housing. They may be getting credits for tax paid to foreign countries based on income made in foreign countries just like you may be getting on your investments. If we limit that tax offset, these companies will be paying a lot more than a minimum tax of 15% since they pay tax in America on their worldwide income.

This is the ultimate act of industrial policy initiated by the Democrats. They are throwing money at the computer chip industry and anybody who spends money on their questionable green policies. They want to pay for it by reducing deductions at a group of other companies. Those companies have been allowed to deduct the expense for new equipment and other purchases as opposed to writing them off over seven years or more. That encourages those companies to expand, improve efficiency and safety and hire more Americans. These tax and spending plans are used to steal the money directly from you and me. Now they have lurched into full bore Socialistic government planning policy as if that has worked anywhere.

Remember the age-old truism. Corporations do not pay taxes; they just pass the tax onto their customers or cut jobs.

And the fact that a large portion of the tax increase will come from a group President Biden has stated he would not raise taxes on – those couples making under $400,000 a year. Senators Schumer and Manchin said nothing about that.

The Democrats got their wish with new spending of over $750 billion between the Chips bill and the Inflation Will Continue Unabated Bill. They are never going to get their revenue offset. Mr. Manchin, how naïve you must be.

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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In Defense of National Conservatism

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By Scott Yenor

Editors Note: As the article suggests, National Conservatism is a work in progress. Some call it MAGA and that seems to mean different things to different people. For us, it embraces elements of political conservatism but emphasizes the historic need to control the abuse of power, especially from today’s internationalist technocratic framework. It starts with adherence to the Judeo-Christian ethos even if the religion itself is not practiced, to the family having much greater autonomy (parents’ rights) and the critical role family plays in raising decent citizens. It emphasizes the primacy of the Constitution and original intent legal doctrine, favors a decentralized economy where market forces driven by consumers allocate resources (rather than government or private companies in alliance with the government), and suggests that many nation-states, much like states within the United States, are less likely to abuse power than international organizations. While rouge nations certainly exist, what is worse is a rouge international community enforcing its will on everyone. At least citizens can leave a tyrannical government or state for better circumstances and if necessary, it is easier to overthrow an individual government rather than dozens of governments. It is hard to find a choice in a global dictatorship and more difficult to resist. MAGA suggests that liberty and human flourishing are best achieved by a smaller, less intrusive government, in a moral environment of self-control, individual rights and moral individual responsibility, and peaceful cooperation.

Two recent Law & Liberty articles try to expose soft spots in national conservatism. Tyler Syck’s criticism pits national conservatism against our reigning civil rights regime, while Mark Tooley challenges national conservatism for embracing a relationship between religious faith and nationalism outside of the American tradition.

National conservatism is a work in progress. National conservatives have issued a Statement of Principles to explain their general disposition, and I signed it. Generally, national conservatives worry that the sovereignty of the nation is being worn away through universal, globalist powers imposing an inhuman, stultifying ideology. International bodies are part of this global imperium. So are multi-national corporations and other oligarchic entities, which are destroying popular government and the institutions necessary for virtuous, happy lives all around the globe. Everywhere, governments, bureaucracies, and corporations are demanding conformity to the reigning civil rights regime—and crushing opposition. This reigning civil rights regime sees all inequalities as signs of universal oppression, and its purveyors demand a remaking of the world by experts in the name of elusive, ever-changing notions of equity.

The alternative to this global imperium must be named. Thus, national conservatism defends our civilized and civilizing commitments like the rule of law and free enterprise and the institutions that serve the permanent and aggregate interests of civil society like the family and sound science. Above the individual is the nation and above the nation is God, not a new world order.

What would a national conservatism look like? Consider some recent headlines. According to the National Association of Realtors, Chinese investors spent more than $6.1 billion on homes in the United States last year. This is certainly consistent with free-market economics on a global scale. Is it good for our country when adversaries and foreigners own large portions of our land?

Chinese companies have bought up land quite close to American military bases in North Dakota and elsewhere. Foreign ownership of American land generally plays a role in making real estate very expensive for our citizens. In principle, though, at some point too much foreign ownership of American soil upsets the country. National conservatives bemoan these developments and advocate for real estate nationalism. Foreign nationals own about 3% of America’s farmland, way more than foreigners own in other countries. We need agricultural nationalism. Slots in our elite engineering programs are allotted to foreigners at increasing rates—they pay full price after all. Is this wise? Public research nationalism is needed.

Fundamental Conflicts

Responding to Syck and Tooley may further flesh out what national conservatism means.

Syck seems blind to the fundamental conflict between the current American nation and our old constitutional government, and the civil rights regime as it has developed in the last two-plus decades. As a result, he embraces today’s pathologies and misreads our situation.

This new civil rights ideology compromises the glories of our civilization. Our universities have been undermined, ceaselessly attack our civilizational patrimony, and they now tend to compromise the free inquiry necessary for advancements. Our Christian heritage is denied or ridiculed. Family life is undermined through a commitment to ideologies associated with feminism and sexual liberation. The rule of equal laws is compromised as people are judged not by their actions but by their race or ideology. Censorship from private sources undermines public dialogue. Floods of unassimilated immigrants undermine national unity and national will.

Syck may recognize these realities but doesn’t want to trace them to our civil rights regime or do anything about them. Consider his point about “Family and Children.” Great nations require great families, and coming-apart families portend societal decadence. National conservatives think that “radical forms of sexual license and experimentation,” among other things, undermine family life. Syck disagrees. Family collapse, he suggests, is a product of “oppression and poverty”—a thought derived mostly from the reigning civil rights ideology. Blaming license and sexual experimentation, he thinks, is a veiled attack on same-sex marriage. National conservatives, he claims, “will not hesitate to enforce certain moral views about sexuality, abortion and the family” with the “full force of the federal government rather than the constitutionally intended channels of schools, states, and churches.”

Same-sex marriage and the ideologies leading up to it are definitely associated with family decline. Those who argued for gay liberation, second-wave feminism, the deregulation of pornography, at-will divorce, transgenderism, and other forms of “sexual license and experimentation” thought their victories would undermine a monogamous, procreative and responsible marital culture and therewith national greatness. The same is true for many advocates of same-sex marriage. Progress in the sexual license has nearly everywhere coincided with family decline—declines in marriage rates and birth rates. Unlike Syck, national conservatives see the necessary relationship between culture and family and are interested in doing something to arrest the spread.

Syck’s worries about national conservatives using the “full force of the national government” are inventions of a fevered imagination. The “full force of the national government” is, as Syck sometimes seems to understand, today on the side of libertinism. No state-level solution to sexual license is possible as long as our national institutions are in the grip of our reigning civil rights ideology. Our Supreme Court made local diversity on abortion impossible until this year. The Court undermines local regulation of obscenity through its First Amendment jurisprudence. The Court has also quashed state diversity by constitutionalizing contraception, sodomy regulation, and same-sex marriage. National civil rights laws nationalize second-wave feminism as an official American ideology. The U.S. Department of Education well-neigh requires states to adopt gender radicalism through its national standards. In our circumstances, getting the national government out of the business of quashing states who would like to go their own way on family and gender policy is a truly needful thing. National conservatives agree on that much.

Do we have the stomach for a more restrictive immigration policy, since it would almost certainly require natives to do work that they deem beneath their dignity? Do we have the stomach for restricting the purchase of ever more American real estate by foreigners, as it would put downward pressure on property values?

Beyond that, national conservatives have not agreed on something that must be done to arrest the spread of ideologies hostile to marriage and family life, or on the level of government at which they would be done. I gave my thoughts on what that something is at last year’s National Conservatism conference—but others interested in preserving America may disagree.

Syck’s broadside against national conservatism is traceable to his embrace of our reigning civil rights ideology, wittingly or unwittingly. National conservative solutions, he worries, involve “trying to beat the left at its own game”—to wit, legislating a different morality than the left is legislating. To which I say, “guilty as charged.” National conservatism does indeed fight for a vision of the public good. Syck embraces liberal neutrality, “creating a space in which citizens can come up with answers of their own.” National conservatives recognize the political truth that there is no neutral ground: our public institutions necessarily legislate morality. Every national conservative is an anti-contemporary liberal to that extent.

Maintaining Our Moral Ground

Which morality will it be? Like many national conservatives, Mark Tooley recognizes the inevitability of morality and the further truth that morality is downstream from religious faith. But Tooley worries that national conservatives put forward the wrong idea of how faith relates to the state. I think Tooley overdetermines what the “Statement of Principles” suggests in this regard, but let us deal with the deeper issue on which Tooley and national conservatives seem to agree: how to maintain a common life rooted in Christian faith and a Christian moral vision?

Tooley thinks separationism has accomplished this goal in the American experience, while national conservatives would have public and private institutions honor Christianity above other religions and would protect the rights of minorities to practice their religious traditions. Fundamentally, national conservatives think that America should take its Protestant roots more seriously and legislate toward a Protestant vision of family life, public research, and so on.

Tooley appropriates Tocqueville to his side, but it seems to me that Democracy in America more strongly favors the national conservative argument. Tocqueville praises the Americans for obscenity laws, for their pro-family ethic of separate spheres for men and women, and for honoring female chastity. These laws shaped and reflected Christian public opinion. American national conservatives hope that Christianity can have an indirect effect on public opinion moving forward, as opposed to the establishment of state churches for which Tooley imagines we are advocating.

Such a relationship was the norm in America until our civil rights regime imposed a secular, atheist vision of the good life on the country. Liberals have squeezed the Protestantism from public schools, so that only evolution could be taught, while prayer and Bible reading were abolished. Perhaps a healthy relation between faith and state could rise again if our civil rights regime could be displaced.

These two critics think national conservatism goes too far. The question, it seems to me, is whether the national conservatism goes far enough. Desiring to promote “stable family and congregational life and childraising” is different from having a realistic plan for getting there in our circumstances. Doing what is necessary to promote “stable family and congregational life” would, in all likelihood, involve serious rollbacks in our public commitments to gender equality and sexual libertinism.

Much the same could be said of immigration policy and other aspects of national conservatism. Do we have the stomach for a more restrictive immigration policy, since it would almost certainly require natives to do work that they deem beneath their dignity? Do we have the stomach for restricting the purchase of ever more American real estate by foreigners, as it would put downward pressure on property values? Every national conservative policy slaughters a sacred cow—and comes with serious corresponding pains.

*****

This article was published in Law & Liberty and is reproduced by permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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A Problem with Creating Politically Correct Holidays

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By Alan J. Levine

American political and cultural elites—in their efforts to give us a revolutionary liturgical calendar—have now turned Juneteenth into a federal holiday. This smacks of the kind of “moral lesson” that Hollywood—or Hollyweird—and more generally the political left like to preach without checking facts. Juneteenth—or June 19—is not a good choice for celebrating the end of slavery.

According to the received wisdom, Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when arriving Union troops informed slaves in Galveston, Texas, of the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaves in Texas were the last to be freed, simply because Texas was part of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Command, the last part of the Confederacy to surrender. But were slaves living in Galveston as ignorant of the proclamation as the story holds? It seems improbable if only because Union troops had occupied Galveston before 1865. The city was taken by the Union Navy on October 4, 1862 and held for nearly three months until a Confederate counterattack retook the town in January 1863. As is well-known, the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued in September 1862. It is highly unlikely that no Union soldier ever mentioned its contents to a single black person in a span of nearly a quarter of a year.

Even if that startling lapse occurred, it is hard to believe that slaves in Galveston, or the rest of Texas, had not learned of their emancipation before the war ended. East of the Mississippi slaves deep in Confederate territory knew of it and trekked hundreds of miles to seek the protection of, or even join, Union forces. Even those who did not take that step knew they had been formally freed. Moreover, Texas was, and still is, a border state. Even then, South Texas had a substantial Mexican minority, which (along with the German settlers) was not sympathetic to slavery or enthusiastic about the Confederate cause. (Runaway slaves in Texas fled south, not north.) Apart from the grapevine extending from the north, blacks in Galveston had ample opportunity, from 1863 on, to learn of their emancipation.

There is, however, another reason to dismiss Juneteenth as a proper date to celebrate the end of slavery. Eighteen sixty-five saw the end of slavery for black Americans, but not for everyone in American territory. Even after the Proclamation, slavery continued to exist for some years in the Southwest territories—overwhelmingly in New Mexico—where enslaved Amerinds may have approached 6,000 in the 1860s. This is known to specialists in the history of the Southwest, but—for reasons that are perhaps interesting—not to Americans in general.

Amerinds had sometimes been enslaved in the original Thirteen Colonies, as well, but that practice declined before the United States became independent, and died out after the Revolution. The slavery that existed in New Mexico was an inheritance from Spanish and Mexican rule, a byproduct of centuries of continual raiding back and forth between New Mexican Hispanos and their Pueblo Amerind allies on one side, and Navajos, Utes, and Apaches on the other, where both sides—but especially the New Mexicans—enslaved their captives. The resulting system survived the Mexican War and the American takeover, after which some Anglos acquired Amerind slaves.

Under both Mexican and American law, this slavery was not supposed to exist. It was never legally recognized but was a social fact. It was not quite like the slave system in the pre-Civil War South. Amerind slaves were cheaper and had some recognized rights. They could not be traded once acquired; they could contract marriages, after which they were freed; and their children were born free. Outrage at that system led to its abolition, along with that of peonage, in 1867. That was the real end of American slavery. Following its outlawing, federal agents were sent out to inform Amerind slaves of their freedom.

This aspect of American history might make an interesting movie or TV show. On second thought, considering how contemporary Hollyweird politicizes everything, perhaps such a production would not be a good idea.

Why is the whole subject of Amerind slavery in the Southwest and its abolition largely ignored? The reason may be that it does not fit the usual picture of relations between white “Anglos,” Mexican Americans, and Amerinds, in which the latter two groups are both seen as “victims” of Anglo oppression. It is an annoying fact that, Amerind slavery aside, the wars fought by the United States Army against the Apaches and Navajos were not, generally speaking, the result of Anglo land grabbing but conflicts taken over from the Mexican occupation. It was the Anglos who ended the slavery that the Mexicans had practiced at the expense of Amerinds. As these events, however, do not strengthen the left’s crusade against the white race, we may never see a holiday dedicated to celebrating this emancipation.

*****

This article was published by Chronicles and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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We Awaken to a Different Day in America

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By The Editors

Editors’ Note: Yesterday, Americans witnessed a criminalized Department of Justice and FBI raid President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home in search of documents. It was unannounced and a first in all of America’s history. This signals a potentially mortal threat to our nation, a nation of laws, not men. Is it a coincidence that the midterm election is three months away after 20 months of Joe Biden’s profound and dangerous failures, the Senate bill that will crush the middle and lower classes just passed in a totally partisan vote (with the VP dragging it to passage) and that Donald Trump is polling as the likely candidate in the 2024 Presidential election? Of course not – this is an executed plan to destroy the past President of the United States, preventing him from running in 2024. What we are seeing is not America – the leftist, progressive and truly Marxist Democrat party has weaponized its narrow hold on power and is violating every norm of political behavior since the founding. President Trump’s statement last evening says it all. The only realistic solution now is for all good citizens to be sure they are registered to vote in the November 8th election and then VOTE. Vote Republican all the way down the ticket, whatever the party’s flaws, and regain the U.S. House and Senate. Both are critical in the salvage and recovery of our great Republic. Without both chambers, two more years of Democrat control will permanently destroy election integrity, bankrupt our nation with a debt crisis of unimaginable misery, increasingly fracture our national defense and destroy our rule of law. Get everyone you know to vote. Vote – yes vote as if your life, your family’s life and our country’s life depends on it because it damn well does.

President Donald J. Trump: Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States. The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level! Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. She even took antique furniture, and other items from the White House. I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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It Doesn’t Get Much Worse Than ‘Build Back Better’

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By Peter J. Pitts

Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer just struck a deal on a massive spending package they call the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In all important respects, the legislation is no different from the Democrats’ long-running social spending plan known as Build Back Better.

Americans should be alarmed. The bill has the potential to handcuff innovation in one of the most critical and successful sectors of the American economy.

The plan would allow unelected federal officials to “negotiate” with drugmakers over the price Medicare will pay for an ever-growing list of brand-name prescription drugs.

In practice, these “negotiations” are federally mandated price controls. Under the plan unveiled by Democratic leadership in early July, the government would have enormous power to name its own price for an increasing range of advanced medicines, and drugmakers would have little choice but to submit.

The cost to patients would be disastrous. That’s because the main consequence of these price controls will be to destroy the research-and-development system that makes America the world leader in medical innovation.

Developing medicines is already a risky business. It costs, on average, nearly $3 billion over 10 to 15 years for each approved new medicine. That’s partly due to the direct expense of the research-and-development activity itself — and partly because only 12 percent of potential medicines entering Phase I clinical trials ultimately win approval. Private investors are willing to take such risks because a successful drug has the potential to earn back those costs and then some.

But if the government successfully puts itself in charge of drug prices, the chances of recouping a medicine’s development costs would plummet, and investment in new research would dry up quickly. Everything from cancer breakthroughs to new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, COVID vaccines and heart medications would become rarer.

This predictable consequence will leave the innovative biopharmaceutical industry in no position to compensate for the investment loss. A recent review led by University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson notes that studies consistently show a 1 percent reduction in industry revenue leads to a 1.5 percent reduction in research-and-development activity. He finds this legislation would reduce industry revenue by 12 percent through 2039 and R&D activity by 18.5 percent, or $663 billion. He estimates the result will be 135 fewer medications being developed in that period — a crippling shortfall that will also be measured in lives lost.

Families worldwide rely on research and innovation from the American health and science industries to bring new lifesaving medicines to their loved ones facing diseases lacking cures. The Build Back Better plan will obliterate future breakthroughs and any hope that comes with them instead of providing real solutions.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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Blind Justice

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By Mark T. Cicero

The founding of the United States and its Constitutional government is predicated on three separate yet co-equal branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial.

The executive branch is inherently political and always will be, it is the seat of power vested in one individual, our elected president.

The legislative branch is political, however slightly less so as it is comprised of hundreds of elected officials from all political parties, all walks of life, and all states. It is the embodiment of representative government.

The judicial branch is intended, from its very inception, to be apolitical. This is the very reason why we have statues of blindfolded women representing the impartiality of justice, why we depict justice as a set of scales for it is to be applied equally.

We have never seen justice agencies and law enforcement agencies of the executive branch be so politically partisan in our lifetimes.

Some may think this is a very recent development but it is sadly not. Consider the work of Eric Holder under Barack Obama, who earned the dubious distinction of being the first sitting member of any presidential cabinet held in contempt of Congress for his role in Fast and Furious by a bi-partisan vote in the house. This was followed by the work of Lois Lerner at the IRS in slowing or outright denying 501c(3) applications for any organization that appeared to be conservative from their application name.

Our vaunted federal police investigators at the FBI took a long look at this activity and decided that, in 2015, found “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment, and institutional inertia” but “found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution yet only conservative groups (bear in mind this occurred in the runup to the 2012 election) had been denied their IRS status under her leadership. Remember that her investigation was thoroughly hampered when all of her email correspondence was ‘accidentally’ deleted from the IRS servers.

Follow this with the bizarre treatment of Hilary Clinton for her use of a private email system for her work at the State Department in the summer of 2016. She was invited to an ‘interview’ with the FBI and was allowed to have her advisors and attorney present. The federal statutes and violations she is demonstrably guilty of have filled entire books (read Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash). Yet no charges were filed for what is clearly a serious crime. Her law firm and that employed by the DNC, Perkins Coie, had an office in their DC branch that housed an FBI team. Why does the FBI maintain an office in the presidential campaign’s law firm? This is the same law firm that promoted the Steele Dossier which led to the entire Russian Collusion hoax embraced by Adam Schiff and the Pelosi-led Congress.

Let’s fast-forward to today’s Justice department under, the one-time candidate for our Supreme Court, President Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland. He now represents the inverse of blind justice, his only mission appears to be the investigation and prosecution of any who do not follow the Marxist orthodoxy of the Biden regime. Consider the relentless pursuit and prosecution of the January 6th Capital trespassing: according to Insider.com, 884 people were arrested for this ‘insurrection’ for crimes ranging from trespassing, and illegal parading to assault. Of those arrested, 329 have entered guilty pleas.  It is important to note that no law enforcement or capital staff were killed as a result of this event however approximately 140 were injured. Contrast this with the riots in the summer of 2020 for George Floyd’s death: 1 officer was killed, over 2,000 law enforcement personnel were injured and these caused over $1 billion in damages.  One only has to review the case files on these two events to notice the zeal with which our legal system has prosecuted the case against insurrectionists versus the ‘mostly peaceful’ BLM/Antifa protests where only 123 participants have received federal charges. But, let’s not get caught up in these too obvious examples of partisan justice.

Let us now consider some other high-profile cases such as lying to Congress. For Roger Stone (who was charged with this among other crimes) it culminates in a pre-dawn FBI SWAT team raid (with a CNN camera crew who just happened to be in the area). This culminated in a 9-year prison sentence from which he was pardoned by President Trump. For John Clapper and Jim Brennan, they received contributor roles at CNN and no arrests. Hilary Clinton violated numerous federal laws for her unauthorized email server and yet has never been charged. Peter Navarro, a top advisor in the Trump organization, was indicted on contempt of Congress charges (the same charge leveled at Eric Holder) and he offered to turn himself in to the FBI. Not surprisingly the FBI ignored his offer and instead chose to slap him in leg irons while trying to board a flight at the airport and send him to solitary confinement for the weekend. These contradictory outcomes of the same charge speak volumes about our justice system.

Attorney General Garland has also stated that the primary threat to our country is domestic terrorists in the form of “White Supremacists”. As of this writing, I am hard-pressed to find any instances of domestic terrorism related to White Supremacy. The only specific charges of domestic terrorism out of AG Garland’s office have been to target parents who object to having their kids indoctrinated by teachers trying to promote Critical Race Theory and Gender fluidity to elementary school children. I am not a prosecutor nor am I an attorney, yet I believe fervently that any form of sexual predation on minor children should be illegal if it isn’t already. This includes discussing gender identities by school teachers. This Justice Department finds no fault in tax-payor-funded ‘educators’ exploring these issues with our children.

Consider also the case of Hunter Biden, as yet he has not been charged with any crimes although there is ample evidence of many. His laptop (whose very existence was denied as Russian Disinformation during the 2020 presidential race) details a wide variety of criminal activity ranging from drug use to hiring prostitutes, to FARA violations, selling access to his father’s influence, et cetera. This laptop, which details numerous felonious behavior, has been continually buried by the FBI as they try to shut down any serious investigation into its contents.

No nation can stand a politicized justice system that prosecutes only those who disagree with the Marxist autocracy that is in place in DC today. We are engaged in a battle of words and definitions as the left continues to move our nation into chaos. We will now have a Supreme Court justice who is unable to define what the word “woman” means.

Homeland Security’s Secretary Mayorkas continually states that our border is secure when over 2 million illegal immigrants have flooded across our border since January of 2021. Kamala Harris has been given the job of securing our borders by President Biden and to date, there has been no change in policy. Securing our borders is one of the principal duties of the executive branch. If nothing else, this administration should be impeached for dereliction of duty.

We are approaching our mid-term elections. Each and everyone one of us has a duty to cast our votes after researching the candidates to the best of our ability. These elections are critical. We need to bring this lawless administration to heel, and the only way we can do that is through the legislative branch and taking back the House of Representatives and the US Senate.  This current administration is the very embodiment of an existential threat to this great Republic it has been entrusted with.  Only we the people can change this.  GO VOTE!

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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In Condemnation of Kyrsten Sinema

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By Neland Nobel

Last January we wrote a piece called “In Praise of Krysten Sinema.”

It was written in a generous bi-partisan spirit. The senior Senator from Arizona had stood up to a massive, expensive, intrusive spending bill.  She had done so under relentless attack. These attacks even became personal as she was accosted in a bathroom at ASU by progressive activists and even had a wedding she attended disrupted by activists. By showing better judgment and courage, we felt she deserved the praise.

Now, in the interest of fairness and a generous spirit, we must condemn her.

After the capitulation of Senator Joe Manchin, Sinema, who holds the “maverick seat” in Arizona, folded like a cheap lawn chair.

She is no maverick. She is a progressive Democrat.

A maverick in this context means a leader who stands independent of party and acts in the interests of constituents.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act is just a slightly smaller version of Build Back Better which she previously rejected. This suggests that the original objections she may have had were not based on principle rather she was just concerned about the size of the original proposal.

However, what is being proposed is massive compared to most previous legislation.

Moreover, it has some really nasty features: higher taxes on the middle class, corporate welfare for green energy industries, higher corporate taxes which will simply be passed on to the public, creates a gigantic army of IRA agents to harry and harass citizens, price controls on drugs, all financed by higher deficit spending.

Even Barack Obama had enough common sense to know you don’t raise taxes in a recession. But Sinema seems to endorse a key provision of Modern Monetary Theory, to wit, you fight inflation by raising taxes. Since the government itself is the source of inflation, this leaves the taxpayer in the untenable situation of either paying higher hidden taxes via currency debasement or higher direct taxes back to the government. Either way, they take the money your earned and spend it on things the government wants, rather than the things you want.

Price controls on drugs will have the same result as price controls on New York apartments. It will stifle investment and innovation, creating chronic shortages and eventually even higher prices.

Moreover, she buys into some of the critical mistakes of the Green New Deal.

Advocates desire to “transition” from fossil fuels to what they contend are “clean and sustainable” energy sources. This is all based on the theory of global warming, which itself is unproven. And even if there is a relationship, it is far less costly to adapt to higher temperatures than attempt to control the temperature of the earth 100 years from now.

Such top-down policies will not succeed given the following variables. It does not control the tilt of the earth, the amount and strength of solar radiation, or volcanic activity both above the surface of the land, and below the sea. Then there are sea currents and all kinds of other natural variables.  The earth’s climate is always changing for reasons we cannot control and in many cases, do not understand.

Finally, we cannot control even man’s activities, let those of the universe. While we are cutting back on coal and oil, China and India are burning more. How will our sacrifices and destruction of our economy do anything constructive, based upon the progressive theory of global warming, when countries with much greater populations than ours are still putting CO2 in the atmosphere?

Senator Sinema, what is your answer? Are you willing to destroy our standard of living to make a meaningless gesture? Do you see what electricity prices are in Europe?

Starting with that base assumption of a relationship between CO2 and warming, Senator Sinema how much of a reduction in temperature are we going to get with the bill and when? Please specify what we are getting for our money. If that is the reason for this monstrosity, we are entitled to an answer.  We know the cost is over $700 billion, can we know the benefit?

If it is for the “environment”, why do we need to hire so many IRS agents? Are they going to be installing solar panels?  No, they are going to be looting the American people.

This is bait and switch. Bait with a vague undefined promise of helping “the environment” while switching to price controls on drugs, higher taxes, corporate welfare, higher deficits, and a vast addition to the ranks of IRA agents.

We have gone through energy transitions before. The question is whether it is a voluntary transition or a forced transition. A good example of a voluntary transition was the transition from whale oil for interior lighting to kerosene. John D. Rockefeller was perhaps the greatest savior of the whales ever. It occurred gradually, required no government money or subsidy, and was embraced by consumers.

Any energy choice should pass the test of the marketplace where voluntary transactions between mutually consenting parties, each seeking their own best interests, are concluded.

What she is backing is a forced transition, using taxes as weapons and subsidies as incentives, to force consumers to make choices they do not wish to make. The evidence for this statement is verified by the policy. A natural transition of energy sources does not require government intervention. It happens because consumers desire it and entrepreneurs desire to profit by satisfying that demand. Choices and competition are present to direct economic decisions and minimize waste to the correct mix of alternatives. If consumers want less expensive and cleaner energy, they will choose it because it is in their best interests. It does not require a centralized government, command, and control approach that likely will make political decisions largely based on pleasing special interests that contribute to campaigns. 

This is not a bill that supports the public’s best interests, rather it supports special interests, i.e. the green industrial complex. And quite alarmingly, this group of interests is largely Chinese communist. They are not reliable partners that have our best interests at heart.

The Biden/Sinema energy transition is a top-down, centrally planned debacle wherein our existing energy infrastructure is being destroyed while the new infrastructure is yet to come on line. This is causing a huge spike in energy prices, contributing greatly to inflationary pressures, and leaving the West, particularly Europe, in the tender hands of Vladimir Putin. This is just stupid geopolitical thinking.

For oil and gas, we leave ourselves vulnerable to Putin. For the rare earth minerals and production capacity for solar and wind, we leave ourselves in the hands of the Chinese Communists.

This bill is bad for the economy, bad for the environment, and bad for our geostrategic interests. We can and should produce all the energy and minerals we can by ourselves.

Senator, you will soon be up for re-election and we will not forget it was your cowardice and bad judgment which unleashed this travesty upon us.

Yes, we know your party is pushing it and you are not completely to blame. But you knew you were the pivotal vote, and it would not move forward without you. So, in that sense, the full responsibility does fall on you. And, you failed us.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

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Documents Reveal Collusion Between CDC, Big Tech During Pandemic

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By Douglas Blair

Documents newly obtained by America First Legal Foundation reveal deep collusion between public officials and allies in Big Tech to silence dissenting voices.

The documents lay bare efforts by officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to push social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to censor so-called medical misinformation.

John Zadrozny, deputy director of investigations at America First Legal Foundation, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how deep the collusion goes and what it all means.

Listen to the [second] podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript:

Doug Blair: My guest today is John Zadrozny, deputy director of investigations at America First Legal Foundation. John, welcome to the show.

John Zadrozny: Hey, Doug, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Blair: Of course. Well, we have to talk about this massive thing that you guys have found out, which is this trove of documents detailing the super cozy relationship between Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] officials and Big Tech over their efforts to censor what is called misinformation surrounding COVID-19.

So just to start out with, could you give our listeners a broad overview of some of the revelations that these documents revealed?

Zadrozny: Absolutely, Doug.

So basically, you may recall last year that when she was still White House press secretary, from the White House podium in mid-July, Jen Psaki basically admitted to the public that they were working, colluding, I guess you could say, with Big Tech to make sure that “misinformation” was not spread on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

And we were immediately piqued by this, so I think we sent a [Freedom of Information Act] request literally the next day to several agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC. Not surprisingly, they were not tripping over themselves to release those documents because they were damning.

We filed a lawsuit this year and we have since been able to get documents as a result of being in court with the agency. They released a batch to us in July and we were able to roll out about 286 pages of initial production from the agency last week.

And what they show, Doug, it is pretty damning. It basically shows exactly what we thought—file this under horrifying but not surprising. They were in very close coordination with Google, Twitter, and Facebook. For emphasis, we don’t know if other Big Tech companies were involved yet. This is just what we were able to get our hands on to date.

Examples of what the communications showed were very close, frequent coordination between the government and officials at Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Very excited willingness on the part of officials at those three Big Tech companies to work with them.

In other words, it wasn’t a government strong-arming companies and them reluctantly going along. It was them saying, “We’re eager to work with you and help you.”

There were instances of basically the government told these agencies what to say in terms of vaccine safety. They basically told them what to say and concealed the origins as federal.

The CDC reached out to … Twitter, saying, “Hey, we found these posts. These are misinformation.” And then Twitter immediately proceeded to not only pull them down, but then suspend the accounts of some of those users.

The interaction, the degree of interaction and the type of interaction, Doug, is pretty gross. And it’s a reminder that we’re in a very dangerous time. It’s not just a question of an abusive government, but it’s an abusive government in cahoots with a large, monopolistic tech industry that has no interest in free speech for the public.

Blair: That sounds incredibly dangerous. And I think the fact is that it sounds like the government is skirting around First Amendment protections for speech by kind of nudge, nudge, wink, winking to these Big Tech companies and having them do the dirty work for them. So it’s not the government doing the censorship, it’s Twitter doing the censorship or YouTube doing the censorship.

Zadrozny: Yeah. Doug, that’s a great point. But I would counter that and say the following: There’s obviously a debate on the right about the private sector’s discretion to do what it chooses as the private industry, as nongovernmental. Remember, the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, all those amendments are designed to curtail government conduct.

However, two things, one of which is, take the government out of it, in a vacuum these companies have reached a size and dimension, and reality in our modern digital age, where they are essentially the digital town square. There is no real public media forum absent these social media platforms.

And an argument could be made, it’s not uniform, there’s definitely disagreement on the right about this, but an argument could be made that they’re essentially, at this point, quasi-utilities.

Imagine a scenario where a phone company was cutting off phone calls of people when they didn’t like what they were saying. We would be aghast at that, and yet somehow this is considered OK.

But it’s even worse than that, Doug, because basically, I think the argument here is that the federal government, by interacting with these companies, whether voluntarily or not, has deputized them as an extension of the government. And so, I think the First Amendment argument is very much in play here.

They can’t say, “Well, we’re private.” Maybe, maybe they could have gotten away with that if they were doing this of their own volition. But it’s pretty clear they were working hand-in-glove with federal officials telling them what to say and not say.

Blair: How long and how extensive do these ties go back? And are there going to be any sort of implications between people like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and other government officials that were directly responsible for this?

Zadrozny: Well, that’s a great question, Doug. We have other, for clarity, we have other letters out to other agencies to find out the degree to which they were involved in manipulating these Big Tech companies and their speech.

Troublingly, if you go look at the documents that we’ve produced, remember it’s only 286 pages, I suspect we’ve only scratched the surface. Some of those communications do go back to 2020, and so I think some of the people might say, “Well, gosh, doesn’t that mean the Trump administration was doing this?”

I think the answer is, if, based on all we saw during the Trump administration, and I was part of it, there are a lot of secretive nefarious actors who were not working in conjunction with the political leadership of the administration and doing what they wanted.

I suspect these ties existed between these officials and the employees of these companies for years. … Gosh only knows what else they were doing behind the scenes, Doug, to undercut the administration while the administration was happening. But it picked up another few notches in speed once we were gone, in order to facilitate the Biden administration’s rollout of the vaccine.

The horrible part about all this, Doug, is that the Biden administration and the Big Tech companies, they wouldn’t need to do any of this if they had anything resembling credibility on any issue, including the vaccine issue. But the reality is, when you’re in a position where nobody believes anything you’re saying, you have to censor—at least if you think like the left does.

And that’s exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing. Instead of having a full and open public debate, saying, “Look, these people who are critical of the safety of the vaccines, they’re completely wrong. Here are the data. We’re in the right. Trust us,” they can’t do that because the data don’t support them. And so, they’ve had to engage in this conduct.

And again, I really think we’ve only scratched the surface. Again, it’s only the first 286 pages and that’s just from the CDC, so there’s a lot more going on.

And Doug, I can break some news for you. We are issuing a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general, [Christi] Grimm, asking her to conduct an investigation of this. We think this is clearly illegal, clearly inappropriate. And with any luck, we’ll get a serious response from the IG. We’re really hoping that we do.

Blair: Well, John, that’s incredible news. And I guess, if you could go a little bit more in depth about what you’re hoping to find with that letter, what you’re hoping to find with these sort of revelations here?

Zadrozny: Yeah. So, I think what we’re hoping is that the inspector general’s investigation is not only able to bring to light some of the other components of HHS that were involved in this—again, we only were talking about CDC, which is technically under HHS. We sent letters to the National Institutes of Health. We sent letters to HHS headquarters and other federal officials and federal agencies.

She may be able to pull it all together in her investigation. But also, she’ll have access to documents that we don’t. And with any luck, she’ll actually bring to light the full scope of this.

We had to use what’s called the Freedom of Information Act to get the documents that we’ve got, and even then we had to take this all the way to a federal judge. She doesn’t have those constraints. With any luck, she’ll actually do her job. We’ll see.

Blair: Now, it sounds like she’s obviously not likely to do that, unless she’s forced to do so. What does it say about this administration that it seems like these revelations have to come out through the work of citizen journalists and organizations like yours, instead of them just saying, “Look, we have a vested interest in this policy going this one way”? What does that say about how this administration is viewing this topic?

Zadrozny: What it says to me, Doug, is that they view themselves as on the wrong side of the issue where they need to hide from the truth. And they can’t have an open conversation and win a credibility-based conversation with the American public.

And I think you could, unfortunately, I think you can apply this to almost every issue area in their purview right now—energy production to national security and so on. They’re too busy throwing, I guess, American parents who attend school board meetings in jail as domestic terrorists to focus on actual medical safety and integrity.

I think another lesson, too, Doug, if I may, is I think we’re probably seeing what happens when we have a federal government that’s just way too large.

People on the right for years—and to their credit, it’s a good argument, it just hasn’t really fallen on ears and it hasn’t resonated—the small government argument has always been a fiscal one. The argument has always been, “We spend too much money. We spend too much money.” Well, that’s all true.

And we may actually be seeing, we may have finally hit the point in the United States where we are starting to see those proverbial chickens come home to roost with high inflation, etc. But it doesn’t resonate.

And I think it’s partly, without getting too much into it, I think it’s because most Americans don’t deal with anything near those numbers of that type of money. Those numbers just kind of glaze over—a trillion here or a trillion there.

But I think the argument that really does resonate with Americans across the country at home in small communities is this is what happens when you have a government that’s too large, and has too much money, and has too many employees, it becomes too radical. And you need to rein it in.

And the only way to really rein it in, it’s not a bunch of old white guys wagging fingers at oversight hearings. It’s shrinking federal agency budgets, saying, “Look, you’re being punished for not doing your jobs. In fact, you’re being punished for using money for things that are dangerous, unconstitutional, and suppressing rights.”

I think it’s one of the most serious conversations we need to have over the next 10 years, Doug, is have we reached the point where we’ve seen too much? We’ve seen what a big federal government really means for the republic, it’s not good and it needs to be shrunk.

Blair: Right. Now, John, that raises an interesting point. We have this information, it sounds like you are taking action, specifically with this letter to the IG, but what can conservatives do? We have the proof now, we have the evidence to show that there was collusion between these massive government bodies and Big Tech. What do we do with that information?

Zadrozny: That’s a great question. That’s the million-dollar question, right? I think for now, because Republicans, conservatives don’t run the executive branch, there’s nothing that can be done there.

In theory, Republicans, if they are to win control of Congress and take it seriously, and actually push back against the corruption of this administration, they could cut budgets. There could be some oversight. Maybe they could recommend potential civil or criminal action against people who have potentially violated federal law.

That’s obviously not going to be acted on by this current administration, but you can put a file together and have it sit there and wait for the right time. And then say, “Look, this person should be looked at for civil violations. This person should be looked at for criminal violations.”

I think this information opens doors for states and even private litigants to possibly file their own litigation. And so I am tempted to say, I’m sure you are too, “Well, so what, John? Another lawsuit?” It does add up. And having been on the inside of an administration, every time you get sued, it takes attorneys and people away from doing X or Y because they have to deal with a lawsuit.

And if it’s not a frivolous lawsuit—and they shouldn’t be frivolous lawsuits, they should be legitimate lawsuits—you’re going to find a lot. There’s going to be a lot to talk about and there’s going to be a lot to answer for.

So for now, I think that’s the best-case scenario. But I would also say that the one thing everyone can do—public, anyone listening here, anyone who cares about this issue or any of these issues—just pay attention to all of this. And then when the time comes, make sure we remember all of this to take action inside the executive branch. An awful lot of people are going to need to be fired.

Blair: Now, as we’re having this conversation, it seems so odd to me that there’s been no, I don’t want to say justification because it doesn’t really sound like it’s justifiable, but there’s nothing coming from the administration to say, “Yeah, we own up to this.” They’re almost trying to push back. Has Big Tech even tried to justify this or are they just hoping this blows over?

Zadrozny: It’s to be determined. I haven’t really seen anyone on the government side respond to this in any meaningful way. And I suspect that private companies, the Big Tech companies are going to say exactly what you mentioned in the beginning, saying, “Well, we’re private. We can do what we want.” Although at the same time, it’s interesting because they’re in an interesting spot.

There are some Republicans, not all, it’s not a uniform opinion, but some Republicans have proposed getting rid of Section 230 of the federal Communications Act, which would strip the Big Tech platforms who operate via the internet with some of their protections.

Don’t forget the whole justification for Section 230 is immunity from content. So they got a lot of benefits by saying, “Look, we’re just kind of the Wild West forum. We don’t police.” Well, now they’re policing, and they’re policing at government direction, and it changes the equation.

And getting rid of Section 230 may or may not be a helpful thing. I actually defer to others on that. But I do think that the private sector’s going to say, “We can do what we want.” But then if you dare say, “Well, we have to change how you’re regulated,” I’m sure they’ll bristle at that.

I don’t expect the federal government to own up to any of this. But the reality is, again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. These people are very comfortable.

It’s pretty clear, too, by the way, there’s no concealment in these documents of their conduct. In other words, it’s not like we got five emails back and all of this happened by phone. They see no problem with this. And so, I don’t suspect that they are willing to say [they’ve] done anything wrong, because they probably don’t think they’ve done anything wrong.

I’m sure they had couch it as, “We’re doing this for the right reasons.” But as you know as well as I do, Doug, the road to hell is in fact paved with good intentions. And so, just because you feel like doing something and you think it’s a good thing, it … doesn’t mean it’s constitutional.

Blair: Right, right. I wonder if there was even some success to this. One of the arguments that I’ve almost heard a couple of different times from people on the right is that when you start to push censorship, it becomes much more difficult for you to justify yourself as the person in the right. To be super nerdy for a second, the quote from “Game of Thrones,” “If you rip a man’s tongue out, you’re afraid of what he has to say.”

It almost sounds like maybe there’s this sense of, “Well, we know we’re not in the right here, so we’re just going to do it anyway.” And that actually creates a backlash. What are your thoughts on that?

Zadrozny: No, I think you’re correct. Except the problem is I get the sense that the Biden administration, as the metaphor for the left writ large, is just kind of going for broke on all things right now. Because I think it’s a combination of things, at least that’s my theory.

One is, I think they see the writing on the wall for the fall elections. Now, Republicans can be weak at times, but I think at the end of the day, they’d still rather have control of Congress, and they’re not happy with the possibility of a wild card Congress asking a lot of questions, and obviously ruining their chances of winning reelection in 2024.

But I don’t think they see that they’ve done anything wrong. I think they’re just … going to double down or triple down. And they have to do a lot of this stuff, because I think to some degree on this issue and many, many others, the gig is up. And the more is exposed, the more it reveals the brokenness of federal government and the need to do things more than just wag fingers at oversight hearings.

And I’m hoping that what this does is actually get people to realize we can’t just do things the way we used to. The same old, same old is just not going to work in a future Congress, in a future administration. This federal government needs to be scrubbed and reassembled for the benefit of the American people.

Blair: And do you think that removing things like Section 230 or taking action against Big Tech companies that do this type of thing would be an acceptable solution?

Zadrozny: I think putting them in a place where they have to consider liability for removing people inappropriately or otherwise could actually be helpful. Why is it so that they get this protection that allows them to be immune from content?

In a way, you would think that if they had this immunity, this would be their way of responding to the federal government, “Look, sorry, Mr. President, we’re not going to work with you guys because we don’t want to lose our 230 status. We want this to be sort of a Wild West medium of communication.”

So yeah, I think that’s one thing that would make a difference. I think if you want to drive a point home, point at their dollars. And their ability to make money here is something that’s a big deal.

I’ve often thought, one thing, if governments—and I don’t just mean the federal government, I mean the state governments, local governments—they want to make a difference, I think one thing you could do is just get rid of your Twitter accounts, get rid of your Facebook accounts. Why are these governments that proclaim to be opposed to what these platforms are doing still on them?

Now, the devil’s advocate argument is, well, you might as well use their medium against them. But the reality is, once you start using their medium against them to an effective degree, you get pulled off. So why give them the revenue? Just get out of it.

And at some point I’d love to see the federal government deal with this when there’s an administration that is not interested in supporting these platforms anymore, and we’ll see what happens.

But yeah, follow the money. If you can make it painful for them economically, they’ll stop their behavior.

Blair: Now, as we begin to wrap-up here, I want to give you an opportunity to really focus in and highlight on what you think people should be looking at. So first off, where can people, if they want to look at these documents for themselves, where can they go? And then, what do you recommend they really pay attention to as they’re troving through these? As you mentioned, there’s quite a few of them. So what do you think they should be looking out for?

Zadrozny: Well, Doug, one thing I would strongly recommend is if people do want to see the documents—and thank you for the plug—please come to aflegal.org. That’s aflegal.org. You can see the work we’ve done on this and also many, many other things, everything from immigration to national security to education.

But in terms of this trove, again, we’re going to need some eyes, and people’s expertise and thoughts based on their conduct. So when you go look at these emails, please, please, let us know if you see anything of interest.

For example, … you’ll see names in these emails, but not all of them, because some of them are redacted. So if anyone has any information about any of the names around those FOIA exemptions the agency used to cover other people’s names, let us know.

One thing I’m curious to know is, are there any professional or economic connections between the people in the federal government and these companies? For example, it identifies by name some people who work for Twitter, Facebook, and Google, who interact with the federal government. But do they have a spouse at the CDC? Do they have a spouse at NIH? These are things that are frequently concealed.

And it’s funny because the leftist administrations always tend to have couples involved in things. And sometimes that manifests in the form of Mr. Jones works at the Department of Treasury and Mrs. Jones works on the White House counsel staff. But sometimes it’s not even all in government. So for example, maybe the federal job of Mr. Jones is dependent upon Mrs. Jones at Twitter, doing what the federal government says.

If it’s the stuff that we don’t know—in fact, the best way I could say it, Doug, is, it’s the unknown unknowns in the production. And if anyone’s got any thoughts, and also if you happen to be one of these people who are working for these Big Tech companies who are familiar with some of this, come reach out to us.

You don’t exist, we will make sure you don’t exist, but we could use your help and information, and anything you’ve got to offer. Because really, it comes down to the people behind the scenes who say, “Hey, I know I’m part of this. I’ve seen this, it’s wrong. I want to help.”

If you’re willing to come check out those documents, please give us a shout and keep your eyes out for further tranches of documents and further information from these agencies and hopefully an honest inspector general’s report regarding the content of this whole scandal across the Department of Health and Human Services.

Blair: Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for Americans to get involved. That was John Zadrozny, deputy director of investigations at the America First Legal Foundation. John, very much appreciate your time.

Zadrozny: Thank you, Doug, for your time. I appreciate it.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

‘Identify Patriotic Americans As Suspects’: Sen. Ted Cruz Confronts Wray On Project Veritas Leak thumbnail

‘Identify Patriotic Americans As Suspects’: Sen. Ted Cruz Confronts Wray On Project Veritas Leak

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By Nicole Silverio

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz confronted FBI Director Christopher Wray about a leak of alleged FBI material by the conservative activist group, Project Veritas, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday.

Cruz tried to make the case that the FBI has a repeated pattern of targeting conservatives and “patriotic Americans.” He pointed to a copy of FBI training material obtained by Project Veritas that allegedly listed the Betsy Ross, Gadsden, and Gonzales Battle flags as themes “indicative of militia violent extremism.”

“Director Wray, what are you all doing?” Cruz asked. “This makes no sense. Do you agree with this FBI guidance that the Betsy Ross flag and the Gadsden flag and the Gonzales Battle flag are signs of militia violent extremism?”

“Senator, I am not familiar with the document behind you and I’m not in the practice of trying to comment on a document that I haven’t recognized. But, I will tell you that when we put out intelligence products, including ones that reference symbols which we do across a wide variety of contexts, we usually make great pains to put caveats and warnings in the document that make clear that a symbol alone is not considered evidence of violent extremism.”

The senator said the document does not include symbols connected to Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

“Instead, you identify patriotic Americans as suspects,” Cruz said.

The senator said this has become a pattern by the FBI, pointing to the National School Board Association requesting U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland use the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the USA PATRIOT Act to stop threats and violence that could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The organization later apologized for the letter. (RELATED: ‘You Need To Follow The Law’: Ted Cruz Grills DOJ Official On The Handling Of Pro-Abortion Attacks)

“How many moms and dads who have spoken up at school boards have the FBI interviewed or investigated since the memo for the attorney general?” Cruz asked.

“I’m not aware of any,” Wray said. “Second, let me address the issue—”

“You’re not aware of any? Like the House of Representatives has written and they have asked you about it,” Cruz interjected.

“Let me say to you and to this committee the same thing I said to every FBI field office after I read the memo, which was that the FBI is not going to be in the business of investigating speech, to policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else,” Wray answered. “And that we’re not about to start now, that threats of violence, that’s a different matter altogether and there we will work with our state and local partners as we always have.”

After Cruz repeated his question, Wray said there have been “small assessments and investigations” of people making threats. The senator said the House sent Wray oversight letters detailing dozens of investigations directed at parents attending school board meetings to oppose mask mandates and critical race theory.

The senator pointed to the case of four men conspiring to kidnap Republican Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which he called a “total debacle.” Two men were acquitted and the others received mistrials. He asked about the number of FBI agents reprimanded over the case, to which Wray would not comment on.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

REPORT: A Manufactured Charter School Scandal

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By Garion Frankel

As the COVID-19 pandemic shut schools down across the country, one micro-school network rose to serve thousands of students in need of an education. Expanding from 80 students to more than 4,000 in just two years, Prenda has become one of the nation’s largest and most prominent micro-school providers. But with that growth came controversy, and an entirely manufactured crisis threatened Prenda’s standing with investors and families alike.   

On April 26, 2021, Robert O’Dell, a journalist with the Arizona Republic, wrote a highly critical article detailing an apparent scandal involving Prenda, a rapidly expanding micro-school network, and its partner, EdKey. O’Dell wrote that “under the arrangement, EdKey enrolls students into its Sequoia online school and collects charter school funding from the state. The students, however, are taught Prenda’s curriculum by “guides” that Prenda hires.”

O’Dell’s article, citing Hall, describes the relationship between Prenda and Edkey as “fraud,” because “EdKey is not providing services. Essentially, EdKey is getting a hefty finder’s fee and then passing the students to Prenda without teaching them or providing them a curriculum.”

He used phrases like “little regulation” to describe Prenda’s operations, and mocked Prenda’s desire to become “the Uber of education.”

In response, O’Dell said, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AG) launched an investigation into both companies, having been prompted to do so by local charter school watchdog Jim Hall. 

But this particular story has multiple holes. First, it is entirely normal for a school to contract direct instruction out to another entity. After all, Arizona’s traditional public schools contracted with the Florida Virtual School during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowhere did O’Dell’s article note that the contract occurred.

Second, Hall, a former principal, appears to have an ax to grind. Hall runs Arizonans for Charter School Accountability, a charter school watchdog group that remains formally unregistered with Arizona authorities. The name is owned by someone else. 

“The Arizonans for Charter School Accountability will continue to examine the financial dealings of this charter organization and others. We will file complaint after complaint. We will go to the media to expose corrupt organizations. We will fight to change the law so that charter schools have financial accountability to the taxpayers of Arizona,” the group’s website says.

The problem is that Hall is the one wasting taxpayer money. Between July 13, 2018, and December 15, 2020, Hall filed 243 separate complaints against charter schools in Arizona. None of these complaints resulted in any action on the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools’ (AZBCS) part, nor by any other agency to whom Hall filed complaints. Once again, O’Dell’s article never specified that Hall’s complaints had never gone anywhere.

When Hall’s complaint against Edkey and Prenda reached the AG, the office did their due diligence. But, as with every other Jim Hall complaint, the inquiry was dropped. The nature of the form, an open/close formality, dated to June 10, 2021, indicated that there was never an investigation to begin with. As “the complaint was unfounded,” there was never a case. While the full document, which has been obtained by Chalkboard Review staff, was not initially sent out, EdKey was informed on June 11 that the complaint had been closed.

“We absolutely respect Mr. Hall’s right to complain to his government, and we likewise have a lot of respect for the hard-working investigators of Arizona law enforcement who follow up on such things,” Prenda said in a statement. “In this case, the complaint was without merit and Prenda is hard at work to realize our mission of empowering learners.” They added that they had never been informed that they were under investigation.

But O’Dell stood by his story, even after repeated email and social media exchanges with Mark Plitzuweit, the CEO of EdKey. O’Dell refused to write an update and repeatedly demanded a close-out form for an investigation that never happened.

“You truly do not understand how the process works…” O’Dell told Plitzuweit in a December 17, 2021 email. “After the complaint was filed, I talked to the AG’s office and confirmed the investigator who was assigned to the investigation and confirmed that it was an investigator in the criminal division, as is laid out in the story. The story stands for itself. You are free to talk to my editors about the story, please let me know if you would like their contact information,” O’Dell added.

O’Dell also argued that the AG inquiry had no connection to a separate AZBCS investigation, which had been closed in April 2021 due to a lack of evidence of wrongdoing. That case had also been filed by Hall, and had also targeted EdKey. AZBCS is under the AG’s jurisdiction.

AG documents are notoriously hard to obtain, even if the results of an inquiry have already been determined. However, Plitzuweit was able to forward the June 10 AG form to O’Dell on February 8, 2022 — shortly after Jim Hall filed yet another claim against EdKey. O’Dell responded on March 1 that he was “looking into writing a story about it,” but reiterated a demand for unredacted documents.

This isn’t O’Dell’s first rodeo with the school choice movement. He attacked Prenda in 2020 and was attacking charter schools in general as far back as 2018. In 2019, he made reference to a “huge win for important work exposing issues with Arizona charter schools.”

No update, follow-up, addendum, or correction to O’Dell’s initial article was ever published.

*****

This article was published by Chalkboard Review and is reproduced with permission.

Inside Liz Cheney’s Coordinated Effort To Prevent Troop Deployment Before Jan. 6 thumbnail

Inside Liz Cheney’s Coordinated Effort To Prevent Troop Deployment Before Jan. 6

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By Tristan Justice

Editor’s Note: The revelations that Cheney actively campaigned to stop troops from being deployed to protect the Capitol from demonstrators will likely not play well in her highly contested race against Harriet Hageman. Some suggest that her bitterness reaches such levels that she will re-emerge as a Democrat. Cheney is trailing by more than 20 points according to some polls, despite getting big money from out of state.  If any of our Arizona readers have the urge to support a candidate in another state, supporting Hageman seems like the obvious choice.

Before Liz Cheney claimed President Donald Trump took no action on the National Guard, she coordinated a campaign to prevent deployment.

Days before the Capitol riot provoked a years-long effort to impeach, prosecute, and politically malign former President Donald Trump, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney coordinated efforts to deter the very actions she now claims haunt the former president.

Cheney has blamed Trump for not ordering the National Guard to defend the Capitol complex, even though multiple sources confirm that he authorized their deployment days prior to the Jan. 6 rally at the White House and riot at the Capitol. Security officials in charge of the Capitol declined to call up troops to protect it, government records show.

Yet Cheney herself seems to have orchestrated opposition to the use of the military to quell election-related unrest, allegedly organizing a Washington Post op-ed on Jan. 3, 2021, signed by every living former defense secretary.

“All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory,” the headline read. It went on to threaten any military official who thought any use of the military might be a good idea. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic,” the op-ed warned.

The op-ed was allegedly organized by Cheney, whose father was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush before serving as President George W. Bush’s vice president. Eric Edelman, a national security adviser to Dick Cheney, told the New Yorker the Wyoming lawmaker “was the one who generated” the piece for the Post.

Now Rep. Cheney has adopted Trump’s supposed inaction on the National Guard as a primary line of attack. On “Fox News Sunday,” Cheney again depicted Trump as an apathetic leader who dismissed pleas to deploy the National Guard while the Capitol was under siege.

“There are several witnesses who say they met with President Trump on January 4th,” said Bret Baier, “and he offered some 20,000 National Guardsmen to protect the Capitol building on January 6th but the offer was rejected. Is that true?”

“His own acting secretary of defense says that’s not true,” Cheney said, highlighting committee testimony from former Acting Secretary Christopher Miller who told the panel Trump made no order to deploy the National Guard. “So the notion that somehow he issued an order is not consistent with the facts.”

Except the president did issue authorization for D.C. leaders to call up the National Guard for pre-emptive reinforcements days before the Capitol riot. While Mayor Muriel Bowser took limited advantage of the extra troops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sergeant at arms rejected or stonewalled the offer six times, according to former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund. Pelosi’s office was reportedly concerned the guard’s deployment was bad “optics” after having spent the prior summer decrying the use of federal law enforcement to put down left-wing insurrections.

When Trump sent reinforcements to secure federal buildings under attack in Portland, Pelosi condemned the extra law enforcement as “stormtroopers.” After days of sustained riots wreaked havoc across Washington D.C., Pelosi called the sight of uniformed troops protecting the Lincoln Memorial “stunning” and “scary.”

The campaign to fight any use of troops to restore order during the left’s widespread and coordinated summer of rage was so effective that Gen. Mark Milley issued an abject apology for merely appearing in uniform at a site that had been ravaged by leftist arsonists.

“My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” Milley said about appearing in front of a historic church across the street from the White House. The night before, left-wing arsonists had targeted the church as part of a riot that besieged the White House and led to the injuring of dozens of Park Police and Secret Service officers.

Bowser’s use of guard troops on Jan. 6 extended to unarmed troops restricted to traffic control and removed from protests.

“[N]o DCNG personnel shall be armed during this mission, and at no time, will DCNG personnel or assets be engaged in domestic surveillance, searches, or seizures of [U.S.] persons,” she directed to law enforcement.

Although Cheney and her colleagues with the Select Committee have sought to indict Trump as responsible for a slow response from the National Guard on Jan. 6, the panel’s own findings have undermined the probe’s point. In December, the committee released a trove of private communications from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who pledged the National Guard would be ready to maintain order.

“Mr. Meadows sent an email to an individual about the events on January 6 and said that the National Guard would be present to ‘protect pro Trump people’ and that many more would be available on standby,” the committee wrote as if revealing some grand scandal to help their case.

In June, Miller and former Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense Kash Patel went on Sean Hannity’s program to dispel committee accusations that the president was indifferent to the National Guard.

“Mr. Trump unequivocally authorized up to 20,000 National Guardsmen and women for us to utilize,” Patel said.

Miller, whom Cheney cited as evidence of Trump’s negligence, corroborated Patel’s testimony on air.

“To be clear,” Miller said, “the president was doing exactly what I expect the commander in chief to do, any commander in chief to do. He was looking at the broad threats against the United States and he brought this up on his own. We did not bring it up.”

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

Now is the Time to Focus on Victory in November thumbnail

Now is the Time to Focus on Victory in November

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By Lori Klein Corbin

We just completed the primary season in Arizona and are looking ahead to the general election in November. It has been a long and exhausting campaign, with many wounds self-inflicted upon our candidates and our party. It hasn’t been pretty. 

Our objective as Republicans should be to save the Republic and thus now rally around our candidates who won the primary. Put away hard feelings and once again focus on the goal of winning in November. 

We need mature, strong, and purposed leadership in our party now more than ever. The labeling, belittling, and smearing of our own candidates by their opponents and supporters through the primary season must now stop. All egos must be put aside and the real work of healing the divides in our party must begin in order to win in November.

With the intramural competition in these recent primary races having run so hot, it is worthwhile to re-emphasize that our real enemy is not each other but the far-left socialists/communists who have captured the Democrat party. Their intent is to “transform” our great nation and all it has stood for, from without and within.

We must go on the offense, expose the tyranny and corruption of those that wish to steal our children’s and grandchildren’s futures, and make them no better than slaves to their God-denying ideologies in their worship of a twisted eco/medical tyranny. We must launch a battle for our God and country worthy of the period of the AmericanRevolution and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution.

In other words, we can no longer continue with the circular firing squad against fellow Republicans. If we are to win in 2024, we need to embrace all on our side, as long as we can agree on general conservative principles. Not everyone will agree 100% on all the issues and that is fine. But we have to define the real enemy, expose it and defeat it in the public arena.

Approaching is a historic crossroad. We cannot afford to lose the November general election and the election in 2024.  In order to win we need committed and strong Republican leadership that plays fair but stands on principle. If we remain divided on social or economic issues, we lose. If we continue to name-call our own, we lose. If we don’t unite our party, win over disaffected Democrats, and reach out to the independent and nonparty designated voters, we lose.

If we fail, it is not our loss alone. It will be the loss of our freedoms, our future, our honor, and the sacrifices of our Founding Fathers and those men and women who died fighting for liberty for almost 250 years.

So, we need to be mature, put aside petty differences, fight for God and country with the God-given talents we possess, and go after the true enemy of our Republic: the evil forces of leftism which is trying to dismantle our institutions, destroy our youth, our families, our religion, and all that is sacred and good in our nation. We must resist their constant efforts to take away our individual sovereignty and freedoms. Let us define the real enemy and fight like hell to defeat it politically before it is too late.

Lori Klein Corbin is an Arizona Republican National Committeewoman and former Arizona State Senator LD6.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

Our Elitist Environmental Experts Are Driving Us Over The Cliff thumbnail

Our Elitist Environmental Experts Are Driving Us Over The Cliff

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By Thomas C. Patterson

Leftist thought leaders insist that we are facing an environmental holocaust unless we immediately drastically reduce carbon emissions.

Yet it’s curious. The governing and influence elites demand massive societal sacrifice, while they are apparently not concerned enough to alter their own extravagant lifestyles. They own multiple sumptuous homes, cars, and yachts. They fly individual private jets to their annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland where they assure each other it is their solemn responsibility to save the rest of us from ourselves.

They refuse to engage in thoughtful debate of any notions that challenge their woke orthodoxy. Instead, those advocating ideas different from their own are dismissed as “climate deniers“.

Take electric vehicles. EVs are touted by enviros as the obvious antidote to carbon-belching SUVs. But they aren’t.

Fossil fuels produce most of their electricity. The manufacture and disposal of batteries and the rare metals required have significant environmental impacts. A growing consensus now acknowledges that EVs may produce more net carbon emissions than today’s cleaner-burning gasoline cars.

You would think anyone with genuine concern about the environment might reconsider EV policy. But they don’t engage. Instead, they soldier on, funding yet more subsidies, benefits and charging stations. Taxpayers get dinged for billions with no discernible benefit.

Clearly, to these decision-makers, climate change isn’t about climate, it’s about power. Egomaniacal persons of all stripes throughout history have had the unquenchable desire to control the lives of others and operate the world from their centers of power. Think Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Gates, Zuckerberg – make your own list.

One irony is that the consequences of rising temperatures may not be that harmful. According to Swedish economist Bjorn Lomborg, the Swedish economist, higher temperatures are far less harmful than lower ones.

500,000 people worldwide die annually from heat-related causes, while 4.5 million die from cold. Over the last decade or so, rising temperatures have caused 116,000 more heat deaths yearly, but also 283,000 fewer cold-related deaths per year. How many hysterical accounts of coming devastation would you have to read to learn that?

It’s not the heat but the political responses to climate change that are causing real harm. Low-cost synthetic fertilizer is an innovation that has greatly enhanced our ability to feed the world. Because it is made from natural gas, climate activists have limited its use, even though 1 billion people worldwide are facing the imminent threat of starvation.

Other pressing needs have been drowned out by the insistence on prioritizing climate change. Recent increases in energy prices were exacerbated by Biden’s self-proclaimed war on fossil fuels.  Europe’s refusal to capitalize on its shale reserves and their shunning of nuclear power also resulted in higher energy prices and lower security, as do subsidies of solar and wind, which are still not substantial, reliable suppliers to the electrical grid.

The costs of climate activism will be even higher if governments seriously pursue their stated aim of producing net zero emissions by 2050. The truth is that climate is a global problem.  With our current technologies and geopolitical realities (i.e. China) such goals are simply not attainable.

But the price for such climate grandstanding would be $5 trillion per year for 30 years according to McKinsey. Every single American would have to pay $5000 per year to achieve even 80% of the goal by mid-century.

Ordinary citizens are getting fed up with these elitist obsessions. Polls show climate change far down the list of Americans’ concerns.

40,000 Dutch farmers recently held a mass protest against government mandates that nitrogen -oxide and ammonia emissions, produced by livestock, be reduced by 80%. The government of Sri Lanka resigned after a ban on synthetic fertilizers decimated food production and the economy collapsed

Remember, we’re only in the early phases of the alarmists’ grand plans to re-order society. Already, California and other areas, possibly including Arizona, are facing the threat of rolling blackouts. An EU official recently warned that millions of Europeans may not be able to heat their homes this winter.

Climate change is manageable through mitigation and innovation. The fabulously expensive, impractical nostrums being pushed by our self-appointed experts are a recipe for human suffering and chaos.

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

TAKE ACTION

The $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 being pushed through the U.S. Senate to be passed by reconciliation (50 votes plus the Vice President) before the upcoming August recess is a threat to America’s economy and the well-being of all Americans. The article above makes clear that Senator Kyrsten Sinema is the one Democrat vote that America is looking at. She alone can stop this legislation. Please contact her at her office locations in Washington, D.C. and in Arizona by phone and letter. Click the red TAKE ACTION link below for Senator Sinema’s contact information.

Although Senator Mark Kelly is a do-as -Chuck Schumer- tells-you-to-do partisan shill, contacting him may be helpful given his significant vulnerability in the November general election. His contact information is also found at the TAKE ACTION link below. We suggest that copying him on your letter to Senator Sinema may possibly have some impact on his voting behavior. Calling his office is also important – the staffs do score the relative positions of constituents and this too may influence the voting behavior.

STAY INFORMED

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